Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes: A Terrifying Look Back

After five years of marriage–and a Vanity Fair cover intended to reveal that their baby was not an elaborate, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf-esque fiction–Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are reportedly divorcing.

In 2005, the pair met. Mr. Cruise was said to have auditioned Scarlett Johansson for the role of bride, along with Jennifer Garner and Jessica Alba. Whatever the case, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise announced their relationship on an elaborate Italian vacation that year–just before their twin summer movies, Batman Begins (hers) and War of the Worlds (his) came out.

The promotion of movies and relationship went hand in hand for the duo–Mr. Cruise appeared on Oprah to discuss War of the Worlds and ended up, famously, leaping on her couch to proclaim his love for Ms. Holmes. Meanwhile, Ms. Holmes did an interview with W in which her own proclamations came across as, well, glassy-eyed:

“Meeting Tom—I’m just exhilarated. He makes me laugh, we have fun, we understand each other, everything is so aligned. I feel so lucky and so—like I’ve been given such a gift, such a gift, you know?” She pauses. “And it’s just really amazing.”

The pair had one child, Suri, whose gestation period, marked by a shifting bump, was eventful. Though Suri was born on April 18, 2006, she was not revealed to the public until the September issue of Vanity Fair that year.

In recent years, the pair has gone quiet. Ms. Holmes has concentrated on a fashion line and reality-show cameos, having dropped out of the Batman sequel to work on smaller film projects. Mr. Cruise has redoubled his energies on becoming a beloved film star–no more couch jumping for him!

If there is solace for the broken-hearted celebrity-watchers today, it is in the fact that Tom and Katie were nowhere near our biggest stars–their love was far too transparently false, or at least odd, for that. It is, too, in the fact that actresses who leave Tom Cruise generally go on to win Oscars. His touch is so intriguingly weird that Katie Holmes, free, is now her generation’s biggest star.